


can anything last at all (in this broken town)

by stardustandswimmingpools



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: (mentioned at least), :(, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Asexual Character, Betty is the greatest human being and she deserves so much love, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Getting Together, Homeless Jughead, M/M, Male-Female Friendship, Non-Consensual Kissing, Not What It Looks Like, Platonic Relationships, Strained Friendships, Title is subject to change, a very slight hint of internalized acephobia, but isn't NECESSARILY headcanon, doesn't really fit canon, not entirely sure what this is, platonic 'I love you', set after 1x04, she's a really good friend okay, supportive betty, this isn't jughead/betty even if it seems like it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-24
Packaged: 2018-09-26 05:06:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9864152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustandswimmingpools/pseuds/stardustandswimmingpools
Summary: Jughead's not sure what to do about Archie, and Betty's doing her best with Jughead.





	1. these walls used to hold heroes

**Author's Note:**

> i don't really know what this is at all or where it fits into canon if it fits at all (it doesn't). it just came to me and i hope you don't hate it
> 
> the title is from "Our Last Days" by The Fray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from "Our Last Days" by The Fray

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this isn't finished, but hopefully it won't get too long

Betty doesn’t usually get Jughead knocking on her door at ten o’clock at night, so she lets him in.

“My mom’s watching that show where they remodel houses,” she says in a hushed voice. “Let’s go to my room.”

Jughead follows wordlessly. He’s not making a sound, because he’s trained himself to tread lightly; to walk around like the ground is borrowed and never leave his footprints. The stairs don’t creak under his weight, maybe because he’s lost too much of it to even significantly press onto the staircase, and Betty is very small. His backpack should yank him down, but it kind of floats behind him like he’s not even holding it. It’s heavy, but it doesn’t exist enough to matter yet.

In her room, Betty closes the door, taking care to hear the click, and then turns towards Jughead, who’s leaning his shoulder against a bare patch of the wall (one of few). He still hasn’t said anything. His backpack has fallen at his feet with a considerable  _ thunk _ that neither of them mention.

“Okay, we should be okay. I’m pretty sure my mom doesn’t have anything against you, but you never know,” she tells him, sitting cross-legged on her bed, hands falling clasped together into her lap. “So...it’s good to see you, Jughead. I’ve been a little worried.”

Jughead’s flash of a forced half-smile doesn’t convince either of them that everything is okay. “Did you...did you want to talk? Or just — anything?” Betty prompts, squinting her eyes uncertainly.

Jughead’s not sure if he  _ can _ talk. He’s not sure if he can ever talk again, if his vocal chords still work, if his mouth still works, if his lips can still form the necessary shapes to make words out of sounds. His tongue feels like a sandbag in his mouth, weighed down to press against the back of his teeth, dry and impossible to use.

After a moment that stretches too long where the only sound is the occasional squeak of a rogue bedspring, Betty sighs. “Jughead.”

“Archie kissed me,” Jughead says, and it turns out his voice box still works after all.

All of Betty recoils very slightly and for just a second, like the news of this is physically slamming into her, forcing her body to shrink just so. She straightens, her eyes wide, eyebrows raised up on her forehead. “He kissed you?”

Jughead nods. He can’t even find it in him, anywhere, to make a sarcastic comment about it. He can’t really talk. His brain is a turmoil of thoughts, of deciding how exactly he feels about the fact that Archie did what he did, and whether or not he’s okay with it, and why.

“That’s — unexpected,” is what Betty says slowly. “Um, why?”

She only looks minimally hurt, like she figured it was only a matter of time, or maybe like she just doesn’t care about him and all of his romantic adventures that much.

Jughead shrugs, and when his shoulders fall they tug his upper body with them. He slouches lower, head tilted down, eyes trained on his battered sneakers and on the plush carpet that adorns Betty’s bedroom floor. 

“Are you okay?” Betty asks. Jughead thinks that if he were sitting closer, she’d reach out and maybe put a hand on his shoulder or touch his arm amicably, but he’s glad he’s not sitting closer, because he doesn’t want her to touch him. He doesn’t want anyone to touch him, more now than ever.

“I’m not sure.” It’s the most honest answer he can give her. He thinks his voice is hoarse, but definitely not from talking too much. Maybe it dried up from lack of use.

“You seem shaken,” Betty says.

“I didn’t appreciate being attacked like that,” Jughead says, his voice sharper around the edges than he means it to be.

“I — I don’t think he meant to  _ attack _ you,” Betty reasons quietly. “What — can I ask what the circumstances were for this?”

“We were arguing,” Jughead says. “I mean. Not about anything that matters. It never is, at first. Then it got to be about summer, like it always does, and he — he said something about how he was distant because he  _ liked  _ me all that time, and then he just.” Jughead gestures vaguely as if the picture being painted is an animation. She knows what comes next. 

“And you...you don’t like him like that?” Betty asks. Jughead thinks, poor Betty Cooper, who always tries to do the right thing, at least. Who deserves to have the heart of the boy who tried to do the right thing, at least. Until he didn’t.

“No,” Jughead says, and then shakes his head, which gives him a headache. “Yes. That’s not the point.”

“Okay,” Betty says. “The point is…?”

“I didn’t appreciate being attacked like that,” he repeats, an echo, a mantra. “Archie’s kissed  _ Grundy _ . I don’t — want that kind of — of —” He trails off, then, because he’s not sure what, exactly, he’s trying to say. It’s not that Grundy’s left a physical mark; it’s just her trace, and it surrounds him like a cloud, and Jughead can’t see Archie without thinking that Archie saw an adult predatory teacher and thought,  _ want _ .

He’s not sure how he feels about having that attention on him, now.

“You should talk to him about this,” Betty tells him, wincing very slightly like she knows this is the opposite of what he wants to hear, and because of that he forgives her for saying it.

“I don’t want to.”

“Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same,” Betty says.

“Don’t drag The Fray into this mess,” Jughead says.

“Music is just a narrative of all of our collective lives,” Betty points out. “They say the things we’re thinking in ways that make sense. And you know I'm right. You need to talk to him.”

“Not now,” Jughead says, and he wishes he didn’t sound so much like he’s begging. “I can’t talk to him right now.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

Jughead concedes, scratching at the fabric of his blue jeans with his fingernails unconsciously. Betty’s voice is very soft and very soothing. Talking to her makes his heart thump a little slower.

“Betty, I…” He falters. The truth can be a weapon on the tip of his tongue, but the only victim is him. He knows the look she’s going to give him when he asks, but he asks anyway, because he’s out of options. “I need a place to stay tonight.”

She frowns, her forehead creasing like tissue paper. “What? What about your house?”

He scoffs. “Temporarily unavailable.”

She gives him that  _ look _ , like he’s a kicked puppy, like she understands something. He hates being see-through; he likes to be the one who can x-ray through everyone else’s feelings, not the one stuck in the machine while people scan his insides.

“I’ll get a sleeping bag,” she tells him softly. She doesn’t ask, and he doesn’t explain, and he remembers again all of the wonderful things about girl-next-door Betty Cooper. Sometimes there are snatched moments when he remembers how close they used to be. Sometimes it aches like a stab wound. She was so good — she  _ is _ so good, even when everyone screws everything up and even when it’s 10 p.m. and he knocks on her door and doesn’t speak for too long.

“Thank you,” he mutters. His pride is almost too stubborn to ask for help, but now that he’s done it, he’s not too proud to use his manners. Betty deserves that, at least.

Neither of them move, though, and for what feels like a long time Jughead sits and almost-drowns in the quiet of it all, the deliberation, and all of the thinking he’s doing and avoiding at the same time.

“Jughead?” Betty asks carefully. “Can I ask you something?”

Jughead tugs on his belt loop. “Maybe.”

“Why did you come to me?”

He lifts his head and meets her eyes. She’s tapping her finger on her thigh, looking very uncertain, and he exhales a breath of air that almost counts as a laugh. Honesty comes to his tongue like a harsh burn.

“Where else could I go?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the line "sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same" is from a song by The Fray called All At Once, hence their cameo mention


	2. black and white and gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's one in the morning when they talk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Our Last Days again

Settling on Betty’s floor is like trying to sleep in a bed of flowers. It feels like by all means it should be comfortable – flowers are good, and they smell nice, but the floor jabs into his back like knives, or maybe he's imagining things. It's warm in Betty's room but he won't take his shirt off (he might never take it off ever again), and heat and sweat prickle like needles across his skin.

It's better than Southside, he repeats to himself. And that conjures an image of his father, flashing across the insides of his eyelids like it's trying to burn its way into his mind, until his eyes fly open. Betty is just settling into her pillow, the kind that Jughead knows is comfortable because she gave him her extra one. He stares at the ceiling, willing his eyes to unfocus.

“Jughead,” she whispers. His eyes snap back into real time and slide over to Betty. Her hair is, for once, out of its insane high ponytail, and it fall over her face messily. Jughead wonders when the last time he saw real Betty was.

“Thank you,” she whispers across the floor, across too many miles of unsent texts and phone calls where neither of them hit the _call_ button, too many ignored smiles in the hallways.

“I didn't do anything,” Jughead whispers back, his voice a grating sound against her gentle one.

Betty's eyes are sad, and it makes Jughead even more sad, because he knows it's his fault, whether or not she blames him for it. “I know.” She gazes at him like she's not quite seeing him for a short second, and then says softly, “Goodnight, Jughead.”

“'Night,” he answers, because nothing has been inherently _good_ about this evening.

Betty rolls back over and Jughead can't see her face anymore, but he knows like a bullet to the stomach that she's probably crying, and he's not sure why. It strikes him that she must be incredibly lonely.

Maybe, he allows himself to think, cautiously, more like a mockery than anything, she's missed him.

Or maybe, more realistically, she's upset because her forever boy has become her never boy.

After five minutes that feel like five hours, Betty's asleep, her body rising and falling like someone's pumping air into her and then draining it. Sleep is less merciful to Jughead.

An hour passes, and his eyes close periodically, but he feels Archie's palm grip his shoulder like a vice, like a clamp, and it startles his eyes open. He tugs at his t-shirt, hates how caged he feels by it. Every time sleep starts to flutters over him, he gets that panicky feeling of being assaulted all over again, and hates that this is something he'll probably associate with his tentative best friend for the rest of his life. If he even speaks to Archie ever again, which is highly debatable.

Hours pass by the beats of his heart. It's one in the morning. There's no analog clock in Betty's room, just the digital one that doubles as a radio on her side table, the one that displays the number 01:00 and _AM_ in superscript, barely discernible in the darkness. Jughead knows that if there were a ticking clock he'd want it to stop, but right now there's only crushing silence like an anvil on his chest, and he wishes for some kind of distraction from his insomnia. His lungs feel like they're very slowly flattening.

Distraction doesn't come until three minutes later, Betty's bed rustles too much to be sleep fidgeting, and Jughead reluctantly opens his eyes and sees her sitting up in bed, rubbing at her face.

“Betty?” he whispers. She jumps, her hand flying to her heart.

“Jesus, Jughead,” she whispers back. “Have you slept?”

“In my life? I'm sure it happened a couple of times,” he answers. “Why are you up?”

“Why are _you_ up?”

“I asked first.”

She sighs, shakes her head like she knows he won't surrender, which shows how little she knows him anymore; he's too tired, would give up if she'd held out just a moment longer. But she doesn't. “Nightmares, kind of. Also, I got thirsty. You want some water?”

“If you're offering.”

She swings her legs over the side of her bed that Jughead's on. Her hair is rustled but it doesn't look _bad_ , necessarily. As she pads over to the door and gently eases it open, he thinks about how Betty is a very pretty person, in addition to how genuinely good she is. She deserves the pretty boy. She deserves, maybe, _better_ than the pretty boy; the pretty girl, or any life she could possibly want.

She doesn't deserve to be burdened with King of Teen Angst Jughead Jones the Third, reminding her of all of her loneliness and pain. Jughead hates being the harbingerof all things depressing.

An eternity later that's actually four minutes, she returns, a plastic cup of water in each hand, and crouches over to give one to Jughead. He wriggles himself into a sitting position, and she sits cross-legged next to his sleeping bag.

“Thanks,” he says quietly as he takes it. The _thanks_ extends beyond the water, and they both hear it. He could say he's talking quietly because it's the middle of the night and waking Alice Cooper is the worst way to die, but he'd be lying. He can't bring himself to speak louder.

“Jug – head,” Betty starts. Jughead hears the hesitation after _Jug_ , like she's debating whether or not she can use his nickname, and he wishes she knew how comforting that would be. To have just one person who uses his nickname, not like a weapon, not like a patronizing word, not like a strategy to soften him, but the way a nickname is meant to be used: amiably. “If you can't talk to Archie, at least give me something to work with. Why...why did you feel like you were being _attacked_ when he kissed you?”

It's unspoken, but he hears it anyway; the wistfulness, the “if it was me I'd be overjoyed”. For both of their sakes, he ignores it. Instead, his chest heaves as he sighs deeply, like filling his lungs with oxygen isn't enough; he needs the air to inflate his whole body, cleanse it.

“It's not just one thing,” he tells her, even though he's looking at her wall, and very closely analyzing a poster of Taylor Swift in her earlier years. “He assumed I would be okay with what he did.” He can't keep the bitterness from his voice, and it seeps in the cracks in his words, the cracks in his story, when he says, “Guess Archiekins wouldn't dream that anyone _wouldn't_ want to kiss him.”

Betty dismisses his sarcasm, and he's grateful. “But you said you like him.”

“I said that was neither here nor there.”

“Well, do you like him?”

Jughead lets out a frustrated grunt. “It doesn't _matter,_ Betty!”

“No, I know that – I _know_ ,” she says, soothing as always, and Jughead, who'd been seconds from punching something – his pillow, or the floor, or maybe her – wrings his hands in post-fury. “I'm not saying that whether or not you like him matters at all. I just think it might help you figure out where you stand about this.”

One thing Jughead has always noticed and admired about Betty is her innate ability to perfectly balance her emotional side and her logical side. She thinks clearly and she still cares; she's calming and she always finds a solution, and absently Jughead decides she'll make a wonderful mother to someone someday.

The thought hurts, and he locks it up in his brain behind bars and thick chains.

He exhales everything in his body. “Yes, I like him. Or liked him. I don't know.”

“Don't blow up when I ask this,” Betty warns. He knows what she's going to ask before she asks it. “If you like him...why did you feel attacked when he kissed you?”

He closes his eyes. “There are ways to like people that don't involve kissing, Betty.”

Betty's silent for a second too long, so he opens his eyes and glances at her. She looks very deep in thought, and then startles him when she speaks.

“Tell me if I get anything wrong,” she says, slowly, looking not at him but at a wandering area a foot above his shoulder. “You like – or liked – Archie, but not in a way that you wanted to kiss him. Just... other...romantic actions, like holding hands and stuff, right?”

“Maybe,” he mutters. Holding hands certainly would have been preferable.

“So you didn't like when he kissed you because he crossed a line,” she continues.

Jughead toys with the hem of his shirt. “Isn't that crossing a line for most people?”

Betty's eyes get sad again. “I don't think so, Jughead.”

“This is about the asexual thing,” he mutters, quiet enough that he can pretend she wasn't supposed to hear, and loud enough that she can pretend she didn't mean to.

“Could be,” she acknowledges. “But, Jughead...if it is, that's – you need to tell him.”

“I can't,” he says, and under the protective blanket of the darkness and the feeling of not-existing that the witching hour brings, he confesses, “It's not normal.”

“It's _fine_ ,” Betty says firmly. “You're okay, Jughead. What Archie did was wrong. He shouldn't have come at you like that.”

“He won't even understand,” Jughead says helplessly. “He won't understand what he did wrong, he'll just keep lumbering around like the idiot that he is because he can't quite grasp that not everyone thinks like him and feels like him.”

“You have to try,” Betty presses. “Look, it doesn't have to be now, or tomorrow. And – Jughead, look at me.” Because his eyes have been burning lasers through Taylor Swift's impeccably styled curls, and they flicker over Betty's face and then meet her eyes. “You don't have to talk about the 'asexual thing',” this in air quotes, “but you have to talk to him. If no one ever tells him he's wrong, he's never going to know.” She reaches out and squeezes his upper arm, and he doesn't recoil. Her eyes are still melancholy, and so is her smile. “And I can never really tell him, can I?”

“Betty,” Jughead says suddenly, because it's very important, arbitrarily, that she understands. “Listen. No one ever said I was a genius, but I have a knack for observation and objectivity. You – you chase Archie, but you're too good for him. I'm not good with feelings, I know, but you have heart, and it's in the right place, and you have to let him go.” He swallows. “Not just because he's not your endgame anymore, but because you need to set your sights higher. You can do so much, Betty Cooper – you can be anyone. Don't lower yourself to Archie.”

She tilts her head like the words take a moment to process. “Archie isn't that bad, Jughead.”

“No,” Jughead says, the words like granite and tar in his throat. “He's okay, and I'm alright. We – we fit, in a weird, messed-up way. You're amazing, and you're way better than either of us will ever be. Don't – please don't settle for less than you are,” he begs. “If you spend your whole life pining after Archie, no one will have a happy ending. You deserve more.”

It's too many words and he only just chokes them out, but they've been said now and he can't go back, and even if he could, he wouldn't. A tear rolls down Betty's cheek, but it's not sadness, and if it is, it's not Jughead's fault, for once.

“Can I hug you?” she asks, her voice cracking twice, and he inclines his head to accept.

Betty's hugs are like being surrounded by the human manifestation of what _home_ would look like. She smells distinctly like vanilla, though Jughead's not sure how he knows what vanilla smells like except for failed ventures in baking in the past, when it was ArchieandJughead. Her arms curl around his neck and she presses into his shoulder.

“I make mistakes too, you know,” she whispers.

“Yours are either fixable, well-intentioned, or both,” Jughead whispers back. “Betty, all I do all day is sit back and watch people. You rise above everyone at Riverdale High – you rise above everyone in Riverdale. You're destined for greater things than this small town, I promise you.”

She pulls away from him and leans back, sitting on her legs, folded under her, and wipes a tear from her eye.

“I've missed you, Jughead,” she says, and almost laughs when she does. “You and your cryptic words.”

“They're all I have,” he admits.

“They were never all you had,” she says softly. And he knows, finally, the truth of that.

He knows that next time he knocks on her door, it won't be an emergency, it won't be nighttime, and he'll be smiling, and so will she.

She pats his shoulder and gets to her feet. “It's late. There's school tomorrow. Get some sleep, Juggie.”

All of the tenseness releases from Jughead's muscles like the rubber bands keeping them so tightly locked have snapped, and his shoulders sag. “Thank you, Betty,” he says, which is the short version of everything he wants to say to her.

She ruffles his hair. “I love you, Jughead Jones,” she says affectionately, which is pretty much what he was trying to tell her anyway.


	3. these hearts will burn 'til our last days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A confrontation, at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oof, last chapter! this was a nice little three-part fic (okay not so little i guess) but i'm proud of myself for writing it because it's longer than what i usually do but i managed it without it getting insanely out of control so :D to myself  
> as always, please enjoy! (and also would you mind leaving a comment when you finish reading? it would really make my day thanks ily all xx)  
> chapter title (shocker i know) from Our Last Days

When Jughead wakes up, he’s not sure if it’s the daylight streaming through the window or Betty’s sunny smile that blinds him momentarily. 

“Good morning,” she chirps, nothing like the girl with sad eyes that he spoke to last night. That girl, he presumes, disappeared in the high ponytail that has now been retied up on her head. She looks earnest, put-together. Jughead blinks the sleep out of his eyes. The clock reads 7:45.

“Arguable,” he responds. “School doesn’t start until nine, Betty.”

“You need to shower,” she tells him, deflecting his comment. This, unfortunately, is very true.

He’s still in his clothes from yesterday, rumpled from sleep. When Betty directs him to the bathroom with the promise that her parents have both left for work already, he can’t help feeling extremely averse to undressing to shower.

Fifteen minutes of contemplative shower thoughts later, he tugs his crown beanie over his head and stares at himself. It’s distinctly his, a brand of Jughead Jones, but looking at hs reflection in the fogged-up bathroom mirror is like seeing ten-year-old Jughead, as ten-year-old Archie pulls the hat over his hair and eyes, telling him it’s a crown because Jughead is a king. A spike of white-hot torment twists his heart and all his internal organs. He tears his eyes away.

Downstairs, Jughead shrugs off his backpack and sits at Betty’s familiar-yet-alien kitchen island. The kitchen, like the rest of the house, screams  _ Alice Cooper _ : too pristine to actually be perfect, undoubtedly hiding a mess behind doors and cabinets; eerily clean. Jughead likes Betty’s bedroom for being all of what her house  _ isn’t _ , or maybe that’s why he likes her. They bleed into one another.

“You changed clothes,” Betty observes through a mouthful of cheerios as he sits. She gestures next to her, where she’s filled a bowl of cheerios for him, too; the milk is open by her left hand, and she slides it towards him.

“I keep a change in my bag,” he says. So far, he hasn’t quite lied. It’s selective honesty. He pours milk into his cereal and stirs it around.

“Me too,” Betty says, swallowing. “Full disclosure, I was worried I’d have to lend you some clothes.”

“You’re too small for me.” In size, maybe, but bigger in every way. Betty grins.

“You’re small.”

“I’m  _ skinny, _ ” he corrects, and doesn’t say why. Doesn’t tell her that a bowl of cheerios is both the healthiest and possibly the biggest meal he’s had in four days. “There’s a difference. I’m taller than Archie.”

He says it without thinking, but it’s a trigger button, and they both fall into the sticky kind of silence that threatens to devour them. Jughead takes a bite of his cereal so he won’t have to speak.

Boldly, Betty talks first. “Are you going to see him today?”

Jughead shrugs half-heartedly. “I have a couple classes with him. So, yes.”

She drums her fingers on the island. Jughead wonders what tune she’s drumming. “Will...will you talk to him?”

He  _ wishes _ he had a real answer for her. Thinking about confronting Archie sounds like maybe the scariest thing to possibly do. His mouth seals shut like superglue, and he lifts a shoulder because he just doesn’t know.

She squints very slightly. “Do you — do you want me to be there?” 

It almost sounds invasive except he knows that’s not what she’s saying. She’s asking if he need moral support, an anchor. Jughead wonders when Betty Cooper became his anchor.

“I can’t ask you to do that,” he says, although he  _ wants _ to ask her to do that; just having her  _ there _ would make everything easier. Words unstick under his tongue when she’s there.

“It’s not about me,” she counters. Her shoulders are rigidly set, like she knows he wants her there even though his immediate instinct is to turn her away. He sighs and knows it sounds pitiful.

“Okay,” he says. “In that case, yes.”

“Good,” she says, tilting her chin up to meet his eyes. It’s 8:08 on the clock, and school doesn’t start for an hour, which means they still have fifty minutes before they have to leave.

Betty always walks with Archie, though. She walks with Veronica, too, and Jughead knows because he’s always a few steps behind, watching them laugh together on the rare occasion when there’s something to laugh about.

He slides off his stool even though his cereal is only half-finished. “I should get going. I usually get to school early anyway. Don’t want to interrupt your morning walking routine.” He’s trying not to be bitter, knows that Betty having friends isn't some vindictive plot. And he knows what he's doing now might hurt her.

But he  _ can’t  _ walk with him. He  _ can’t _ .

Betty’s lips quirk into a soft smile. “Are you sure you don't want to finish your breakfast? Most important meal of the day,” she says, nudging his bowl closer towards him. 

Jughead hoists his backpack onto one shoulder, fingers tight around the strap. “Yeah, I'm sure. I'll see you in Chem.”

Their eyes meet and he lowers his immediately. As he turns to leave, she says, “Archie has football practice after school. We can catch him before it starts, outside the locker room.”

Jughead turns, and nods. “Sounds like a plan.” He pauses. Shifts on his feet. “Um, thanks. For the —” he gestures widely, and he means to say  _ everything _ . For the advice, for the home, for the kindness, for the hospitality, for her warm, sad smile. “Sleepover.”

Betty nods, and the smile on her face, however faraway, is genuine. “Of course. Anytime, Jughead. I mean it.”

“I know you do,” he answers, and doesn't let his voice crack or his eyes fill with tears until after he’s outside the Cooper household, his chest tightening.

* * *

School has never successfully sped past  _ and  _ dragged on simultaneously, but today it manages. The bell rings after five minutes in his good classes, and five hours in his classes shared with Archie, all of which he spends staring at the redhead’s letterman-clad back, thinking hard.

Pros and cons. 

The one time Archie turns around in his seat, Jughead immediately drops his eyes and buries his head in his arms, folded on top of the desk. He can feel Archie’s gaze like it’s burning through his flesh but he doesn’t lift his head for the rest of the class. In the background, their AP Gov teacher is explaining checks and balances. He already knows about checks and balances. 

When the bell rings and he jolts up, he thinks he might have fallen asleep in class, and no one would notice if he had; he’s in the back of the classroom, under no one’s watchful eyes, to do just about as he pleases. The teacher leaves him alone because he gets good grades, although Jughead’s not sure how he’s still passing this class at all, let alone with flying colors; he only ever pays attention for ten of the allotted forty-five minutes of instruction.

He hurries out of class and for once is thankful for the sea of students drowning anyone who can’t keep their head above the crowd. Archie would have stopped him, he knows, and he’s not ready to deal with that. Not yet, not here, not now, and definitely not in the amount of time he has.

Especially not without Betty.

He feels guilty for ditching her so spontaneously at her house, and then he sees her at her locker, a bright smile on her face as Veronica animatedly lectures about whatever it is Veronica gets passionate about, and she looks so taken that he can’t bring himself to feel too much remorse. In the end, she belongs with Veronica. Not Jughead.

She does wave to him, though, wiggling her fingers in his direction with that same bright smile, and before he can vanish into the masses, Veronica spots him and waves at him too. He gives a half-hearted jerk of the chin and disappears.

The end of the day comes like a physical punch to the gut, and before Jughead can catch his breath he’s walking an empty school hallway, Betty at his left.

Schools are different when they’re empty; they’re robbed of purpose, stripped of the whole meaning of their existence. No one is learning. They shut down, in a way, or fall asleep when they aren’t needed; it feels like Jughead and Betty are traipsing through a dozing school.

It’s been two minutes of silence that could almost be deemed companionable before Betty says, “Jughead.”

“Hm?”

“I know…” She sighs. “I know I said you need to talk to him, but I feel like I pressured you into this.”

“Betty, don’t.” He shakes his head. “You were right. I need to do this. The sooner the better, right?” Right?

“What are you going to say?”

Jughead blinks. He hadn’t thought that far into it; eighty percent of success, after all, is showing up, and by showing up to this confrontation, Jughead feels he’s accomplishing a lot more than he thought he’d be able to. Of course, Woody Allen never did say what the other twenty percent of success is, and maybe that means he’ll actually have to talk. A lot. Say what he’s  _ feeling, _ and  _ thinking _ . Negotiate.

“I don’t know,” he mutters, victim to the truth under Betty’s cautious stare.

She pats his arm. “You’ll figure it out. Just tell him how you feel.”

Easier said than done. Jughead hasn’t told anyone how he really feels since July 4th weekend. 

There’s a simultaneous flash of red in real life in front of them and in Jughead’s mind as Archie jogs past them into the locker room.

“Archie!” Betty calls out quickly, and then nudges him. “Come on, I believe in you.”

Archie backpedals out of the locker room. “Oh. Uh. Hi, Betty, Jughead.”

Jughead gives a curt nod. “I, uh, I need to talk to you.”

Archie blinks. “Can it wait? I have practice and —”

“No, it can’t wait,” Jughead interrupts. His tongue feels like it’s dancing with flames and the words he’s saying could very easily burn Archie, so he bites them back. In the corner of his eye, Betty gives an encouraging nod. “Tell your coach you’re going to be late.”

Archie pauses, and his eyes flicker to Betty; Jughead knows what’s going through his mind like it’s his own internal monologue.  _ Why does he want to talk? Is this about the kiss? Why is Betty here? Does she know? _

“Okay,” Archie surrenders. “Can we — I don’t know — find a classroom or something?”

They find a classroom, and Jughead follows Archie, and Betty follows Jughead. He notices that she walks lightly too; not like she shouldn’t make a sound, but like she doesn’t want to. As if the world has something to say that she can only hear if she doesn’t creak on the floorboards and squeak on the linoleum.

“Betty…” Archie says, awkwardly shifting. “Could you excuse us?” 

“No,” Jughead says. “She’s staying.”

Archie raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“Think of her as...moderator,” Jughead says. “Or referee, in your jock-sporty terms.”

Archie blinks again. Jughead wonders if he thinks that blinking will make the scene before him dissolve if he does it enough times. “I, um, okay.”

Jughead is prepared to flat-out accuse Archie, and then the words stick to his throat. He looks pleadingly at Betty, and knows that Archie knows he’s pleading too, because by now the only person who knows him better than Betty is Archie. They both play along. All the world’s a stage, et cetera.

“Archie,” Betty says clearly (Jughead has a fleeting vision of Betty as a courtroom judge), “Jughead needs to tell you something about what happened between the two of you.”

Archie’s eyes widen unnoticeably and he stares at Jughead, as if to say,  _ you told her?! _ Jughead sets his jaw.

“You kissed me.” The words are like dust and they cloud his mouth, make him want to cough up any other dangerous words he might have hidden in his windpipe. Archie winces.

“I…”

“I didn’t appreciate being attacked like that.” It’s an exact echo of what he said to Betty, only monotone, but the way Archie’s eyebrows furrow and his forehead creases tells Jughead that at least some of the message got across.

“Attacked?” Archie asks uncertainly. “Jughead. I — I can see you didn’t want me to kiss you, but I wasn’t trying to attack you.”

Jughead takes a deep breath, steeling himself. “It’s not that I didn’t want you to kiss me. Necessarily. I know — I know what you  _ meant  _ by it. I get that you were frustrated or had pent-up romantic feelings or whatever you want to call it, but — I really didn’t —” His hands ball into fists. “You can’t just  _ kiss  _ me because  _ you’re _ confused, Archie. You crossed a line.”

“I know,” Archie says quickly, “and I’m sorry, it was stupid —”

“Let me finish,” Jughead cuts him off. Archie falls dumbly silent.

Another deep breath, and he kind of wishes he was inhaling carbon monoxide instead of oxygen. Death would be a welcome to relief to all of this...this sharing, and these feelings that he somehow can’t find the words for, even though words are all he’s ever been good at.

“I like you,” he admits, even though the words sound cliché and dumb and foolish and fourth-grade-level. “Maybe not exactly the way you want me to, but I like you like...holding hands. Going on dates. Whatever it is you would do in a normal relationship,” the word  _ normal  _ like an unspoken message:  _ I’m not _ , “just without the kissing and...related things.”

Sex is what he’s thinking of, but there is no way even Betty could pry  _ that _ word from his cold, dead voice box.

Archie’s knuckles are white because he’s clenching the desk he’s leaning against. Jughead figures he doesn’t quite realize.

“You like me…” he says slowly. “As in, like-like?”

Jughead rolls his eyes. “What are we, sixth-graders? Yes, like-like.”

Archie lets out an infinite breath, and there’s a new light in his eyes that Jughead hadn’t quite noticed to be missing until it returned. “That’s...that’s great. I mean, not great, just...relieving. For me.”

Jughead isn’t quite done, but Archie looks like  _ he’s _ done, and maybe that’s all there is to be said; maybe Jughead’s thing can wait.

Archie knocks his knuckles against the underside of the desk. “So — um, I still have practice…”

“Go ahead,” Jughead says, gesturing towards the door. Archie beams.

“Thanks, I — thank you,” he says, but what he’s thankful for is unclear.

As he passes, Betty grabs his t-shirt and tugs him backwards. Jughead blinks this time. The scene doesn’t dissolve.

“Not yet,” she corrects. “Jughead’s not done, are you, Jughead?”

Jughead hopes he never loses Betty in his life ever again. He looks at his feet.

“Um, I wasn’t,” he admits.

Archie freezes in place, then hoists himself up onto the desk he was previously leaning against. “Sorry, you’re right. You know what? I’ve done too much talking and  _ doing _ . It’s your turn, Jughead. Talk.”

When he falls quiet this time, Jughead knows he won’t start talking until Jughead gets everything out.

“I’m ace,” he mumbles. “You know. I told you that. A couple of years ago. You and Betty. I guess...it didn’t occur to me that boundaries were something I needed to worry about. I don’t know enough people for the chance of anyone wanting anything with me to be a real chance. I never worried about it, but.” He swallows, with considerable difficulty. “But boundaries are a thing, and I need you to know them, because you crossed one when you kissed me out of nowhere, and I really — I don’t —” He shakes his head. Archie’s face is somehow becoming bright red in his cheeks and starkly pale everywhere else, which is slightly disconcerting. “You can’t do that. It’s not just normal-people discomfort, I mean you really just...can’t.”

Archie, eyes blown wide but still mercifully wordless, nods once. Betty nods too. Jughead hates having all of this attention, even though he would trust Betty with his life now, and with Archie...well, he’s almost there again. 

“I want — I would have...whatever it is you wanted,” he continues. He knows scarlet is blossoming on his cheeks too, but he presses on, pretends he’s alone, pretends this is a monologue in front of a mirror. “If you want a relationship, I would like that, but I...we need to talk about this. Not now. Sometime later. Soon.”

He bites his lips, worries it between his teeth, releases it and clenches his jaw. He’s done and he just wishes someone would  _ say something _ .

“I do want a relationship with you,” Archie whispers, as if he’s not quite sure he’s allowed to talk yet. “I mean, if that’s what you want...I want to date you. I would love to. And I want to talk about — about boundaries and crossing lines and stuff so I never do it again. I care about you, Jughead. I really do. I don’t — I  _ never _ meant to make you uncomfortable, and I’ll never forgive myself for it,” which Jughead thinks might be a little melodramatic because eventually even  _ he _ will forgive Archie for it, but the human brain can work in strange ways, “but I do want this with you. If you...if you do.”

Something expands inside of Jughead’s chest, filling him with the equivalent of helium, as if he’s floating suddenly, the world just a speck at his feet. He looks up and when he meets Archie’s eyes, warm and sepia and just short of golden, the feeling spreads to the rest of his limbs and all of his internal organs, fluttering around sort of. He remembers getting this feeling just before July fourth. Seasons change but people don’t. Some people, smart people,  _ normal _ people, would call it love.

Jughead’s getting there.

His posture loosens when all of the tension goes out of it, and Betty beams. “There we are,” she says brightly. “I’m so happy you figured that out.”

Archie tilts his head. He looks like a confused puppy, which reminds Jughead of Hot Dog, which aches for a split second before his heart goes all warm from how cute Archie is. “No offense, Betty, but...why exactly are you here?”

Betty meets Jughead’s eyes, and he smiles at her. He knows his smile is uncertain, but at least it’s genuine; he learned that little trick from her.

“Moral support,” she says simply. “And now, if you boys will excuse me, I have a date.”

“What?” Archie and Jughead say simultaneously. They look at each other, grin (the kind of grin that crinkles around Archie’s eyes, and Jughead thinks of how beautiful he is), and then look incredulously at Betty.

Betty huffs good-naturedly. “Honestly, no one pays any attention to my life. I’m going out with Veronica.”

Archie starts to cough violently, and Jughead knows he looks smug, but in his defense, he called it.

In his head, but still.

“Have fun,” he says smoothly. 

Archie is still coughing, but he manages, “Yeah, have fun, Betts.”

She beams too cheerily to be earnest and just cheerily enough to be teasing, and then leaves.

Archie finally gathers himself. “Did you know?”

“I had an inkling,”  Jughead confesses.

“I might have to tell coach I’m not feeling well,” Archie says defeatedly. “My brain is overloading.”

Jughead flashes him a smirk that almost counts as a real smile. “How does the treehouse sound? I’d offer Pop’s, but Betty and Veronica.”

He’s lost his hold on almost everything in life, but the treehouse stands stubbornly in the same tree in which it was built. Archie’s smile lights up the room and sends white-hot rods of iron into Jughead’s heart, not in a painful way, but in a very sharp-realization way. “Sounds perfect. Let me get my football stuff.”

Somewhere out there, in a town called Riverdale, a murder has happened, and four people of no significance are working on solving the mystery. But here, now, in this moment, Riverdale is full of something Jughead calls  _ happiness, _ which is a word he only used to use in fiction. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked it !! i used lyrics from Our Last Days because i liked them but honestly im reading through the full lyrics and it sounds like a really good representation of jarchie so [here](http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/fray/ourlastdays.html) are the lyrics if you want them and [here](https://youtu.be/ip_nslRYw8M) is the song! (not sure what my deal is with the fray in this fic but oh well no going back)

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!!! my tumblr is @aceriverdale or @vivilevone


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